Thursday, 26 March 2009

Lad: Good Morning. First tell me the origin of your unusual name.TC: You mean Trouser? Well, when I was a little tweet, we was cockeyed poor. I slept in one leg of a pair of my Daddy’s overalls-you know, like a sleeping bag. Mama called me the Trouser Boy. Reckon now that’s my name.

Lad: Tell me what you remember most about Low Melody Farm and your childhood.TC: Daddy believed that a kid oughta have chores, like a list of regular things to do. You couldn’t play or fiddle around until that list got checked off. And you couldn’t cheat-Daddy had a copy of the list in his bib all times.TC sighs. But mostly it was a good childhood. Full of adventures. I pretty much played by myself. Didn’t like the little Neds-the Townies I mean. I rather play sticks than townie games.

Lad: Sticks? What is that?TC: Sticks is when you cut a small pole about a yard high. And you find other poles in the woods and they smack each other. The pole that breaks loses. But if you be careful, like pick a persimmon pole, you can whup every other stick.

Lad: Okay, Now about that story you told in the book ‘Odie Dodie’. What do you think the tale about Ferro and the fishes is really all about? Is there a moral or lesson to that story you wanted readers to learn---a special message?TC: In my head I followed some kind of direction that I wasn’t in control of. It was a dream, but not really a dream. Because I rode that tractor down to Caddo Creek just like the story says. I didn’t make that up.

Lad: But in the tale you tell of sleeping by the Iron Ore Pond and waking up after what was a long rest, reciting the tale of the fishes.TC: But in that dream it actually happened. I came swooning out of my body. My body was at Iron Ore Pond, and my figment was on the 8-N Tractor, like I said. I was with Ferro and the Fishes on their ride to Progunder.If you read the story again, you will recognize that it is the Good Book tale of Exodus. The fishes are freed and they follow their new leader. But they forsake him later, and they all die.

Lad: Is that the fate of mankind today?TC: I look around and I see the merriment and the frolic, and the forgettin’ of the rules. I think that is what happens when things get too good and nobody has a chores list. Also, you surprisingly can learn that the leader is just plain wrong. Yep, leaders sometimes hear the wrong drummer, but there ain’t no one there that can tell them anything, because, well, they are the Deciders.

Lad: But in the end, the faithful fishes all die. Is that what all of us can expect?TC: 'Spose so. The big Ten-Star General Julius Caesar was the best leader of all the big wars of the Roman World. But even he learned there was a fiddler to be paid.

Lad: And what was that?TC: There was a simple but trusted scribe that whispered in his ear the warning, that ’All Glory is Fleeting.’ Then look what happened to Rome.

Lad: We could all learn from that. But to sum up, what is the best lesson we can learn from the fate of the fishes at Progunder?TC: That singing man Bob Dylan had it right. Do you know what he said?

Lad: Not actually.TC: He wrote these words once: He said, ‘Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.’So I trustes, I mostly obeys, and I serves my chores list. But I keep one eye squinted in case the Deciders is wrong.______

To read more about Trouser and his friends, pick up a copy of Odie Dodie paperback | eBook

It would be a cold day in the storied caves of Hades before anyone got any better at it than Odie Dodie.When he flashed that smile and touched their hand, long-malnourished moths escaped from tightly clasped wallets.He sold what everybody wanted …God’s eternal love and forgiveness: the always special-of-the-day.

Roll up … roll up … for The Very Rev Odie Dodie. God’s worst nightmare!

Lad Moore builds a collection of twenty tales of stark reality, hanging on the wobbly hook of a phony, money grubbing, licentious gospel-peddler, Odie Dodie and his unholy glory bus. He sees his flock as sheep – there for the fleecing.

The sad acceptance by the gullible rogue religion Odie Dodie pitches by the dime make Lad Moore’s interim tales of simple humanity all the more poignant.

Never since Steinbeck and Hemingway has an author written so tightly, entertainingly and honestly about what matters most …

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Light a candle in a cave and it provides an all-round light that creeps into crevices – this is what came to mind when I read The Jealousies. Ben Stainton is not shy about holding a naked flame up to his body and mind. Birth, womanising, hangovers, love, states of mind and much more are all re-created in flickering images.

What do I mean my flickering images? Well, reading these poems is almost like reading stream of conscious writing – but well edited. The poems seem to recall real events but the writing juxtaposes them with subconscious connections. So the poems manage to be simultaneously both real and abstract. The connections mostly work to create beautiful poems that are both strange and accessible, such as ‘Ella’:

Like the coiling mouth of the evening sea, my love for her light opens and closes, she cracks open the sullen heart of mine.

Ben is a master of metaphors and uses them effectively to unpeel honesty without banality. ‘Walnut Tree Lane’ is a tender poem about pregnancy which manages to be in the present while using images that both reference the mother’s changing body and look forward to the baby’s arrival and associated paraphernalia:

There are some poems I ‘don’t get’ but that’s probably because I’m just not seeing the connections – but maybe you will. The collection reads as autobiographical although the section entitled ‘Films’ is about famous people. Overall this is an exciting and original collection for those who enjoy modern poetry. It’s full of originality embedded in emotional energy.

Friday, 20 March 2009

Overweight and jaded, rich and lonely, Rupert Ruskin clings to an obsessive belief that if he can witness a thousand beautiful sights in a single day, his shattered and sordid existence will turn to bliss.

But his dreamquest for A Thousand Beauties is stalled when beloved and eccentric ex wife, Elaine, bursts back into his life with disturbing news.

Ruskin now has to make room for a more immediate and secret plan ... but should it be for a wedding or a funeral?

Mark Adam Kaplan navigates the peaks and troughs of co-dependency and mutual punishment in a magnificently spun story of love and loathing. His urgent, yet poetic prose trap the reader like a spider traps a fly in an intricate web both beautiful and deadly.

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

A young university student from Boston takes on the summer job, in a small rural town, of clearing the accumulated rubbish from the house and garden of an elderly man, George O'Brien, and his granddaughter, Candice. The task is not as straightforward as he at first thought and Mitchell finds himself drawn into the mystery surrounding the Black Garden and the lives of his employers.

Can he solve the secret behind the animosity of the townspeople? Can he do so without endangering George's freedom and leaving Candice even more isolated?

Saturday, 7 March 2009

To celebrate Read an eBook Week, March 8th - 14th, we will be giving away a selection of eBooks to download for free. Please click the covers below to download your free copies. Each day will have a different genre of books to chose from including Crime, Adventure, Fantasy etc.

In his first full-length poetry collection, Alex Stolis explores a multitude of fascinating, yet flawed characters: iconic movie directors creating their scenes, a despondent emperor in a tarot card, a female bullfighter preparing for battle, Dick and Jane dying slowly in the suburbs. From mysterious old letters addressed to a lover in West Hollywood, to anonymous authors who quietly lament the loss of an old world, Stolis' skillful use of exquisite language and his exploration of universal human truths make for an impressive and compelling compilation.

A Wilderness Arcade at 4AM

I want to be on an island with Patti Smith:bookmark words in the sand, dredgethe ocean for poems. I want to curl and twistwrists into conch shells, flirt with madness,pluck guitar picks from tree topsand bury my head in the sun's shoulder.

I want to wake to the bloom of white noise,watch skyscrapers rise like salt-licksagainst an asphalt horizon, cross my legson rooftops, strain to hear the sound of traffic.Mostly; I want to be on an island with Patti Smith

A Wilderness Arcade excerptAlex Stolis is the author of six chapbooks, and the recipient of five Pushcart Prize nominations. His sixth chapbook, small confessions & pebbles of regret, was a collaborative effort with the Austrian Poet Michaela Gabriel. A Wilderness Arcade is his first full-length collection. Alex lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Friday, 6 March 2009

To celebrate Read an eBook Week, March 8th – 14th, BeWrite Books will be giving away a selection of eBooks to download for free. Please follow this link to download your free copies. Each day will have a different genre of books to chose from including Crime, Adventure, Fantasy etc.

Monday, 2 March 2009

Junkyard Dog: there are many platitudes that I could lavish upon it, but having seen so many well-known authors use inane banalities to publicise each other's novels I believe Sean Parker deserves better. The story is a brutal, well constructed account of life on the streets of Manchester, and each of the characters has a presence that I find most appealing. However, in Charlie and Burnett, Parker has managed to create two people who install both fear and expectation, and it is this that kept me turning pages.

The character of Liverpool Wally Thom makes The Godfather's Luca Brasi look like an assistant at Mothercare. If Parker has plans for a follow up novel I cannot wait to see how he is going to turn out.

... many thanks for a terrific story.

Ian Allison

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A fantastic read; rough and tough stuff.

Paul Kilduff

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It was a cracking read. Very good characters that if you are, or were in my case, from Manchester you could very easily relate to the characters.

I really liked Charlie (a character like so many who have passed through many of our lives in Manchester - sheer intelligence along side of sheer brutality) and Burnett was quality and as a half brother worked well along side of Charlie. But despite the two main characters - the ones you created along side of them worked in unison very well.

The story was well told and the way in which you kept bringing past details back into play worked very well. I can almost envisage the process taking place with certain scenarios falling into place. It was a quality read and I look forward to reading the next one when it is published.

Chopper

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Having spent most of my life at sea, a good book is a must. Now retired, a good book is even more important. Junkyard Dog is the first novel in over twenty years that I have read without putting it down, except a couple of times to replenish a glass of cognac which, I am sure, you will forgive me for.

It is years since I read Mickey Spillaine but your novel prompted the thought of him. But I do not believe that even he was as good as you when it comes down to describing graphic violence. You have a way of doing it that makes it real, as opposed to most authors who pay scant heed to the fact that anybody on the receiving end of violence is going to get hurt quite badly.

Many thanks for a wonderful story, one that contains such believable characters that, even now, I can still see them in my minds eye.

Peter J. Harris, Master Mariner (Capt Retd)

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Long after half-brothers Charlie Collins and John Burnett have gone their separate ways, fate intervenes and their paths cross again with devastating consequences. In mid-nineties Manchester, at a time when gang warfare reached unprecedented heights of fearsome intimidation and horrendous violence, certain individuals reign supreme.

The all-night revellers who frequent the many bars, pubs and nightclubs rarely catch a glimpse of the intense brutality that goes on in this dark and murky world. Manchester can be a scary place for unwary souls, or those bent on dirty deeds.

From the dangerous alleys of Manchester to the violent streets of Paris and London, Junkyard Dog is an explosive mix of raw power and brutal energy that heads like an express train to its final confrontation.

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